Digital maps are found in and may be displayed by a wide variety of devices, including mobile phones, car navigation systems, hand-held GPS units, tablet computers, laptop and desktop computers, and many websites. Although digital maps are easy to view and to use from an end-user's perspective, creating a digital map is a difficult task and can be a time-consuming process. In particular, every digital map begins with storing, in a map database, a set of raw data corresponding to millions of streets and intersections and other features to be displayed as part of a map. The raw map data that is stored in the map database and that is used to generate digital map images is derived from a variety of sources, with each source typically providing different amounts and types of information. This map data must therefore be complied and stored in the map database before being accessed by map display or map rendering applications and hardware.
Map data may include map image data, such as a satellite image, vector data used to generate map features such as street features at different zoom levels, label data such as text labels of map features, traffic information, transit system status, etc.
Any of the map data may have information subject to copyright or may include content subject to copyright, for example, satellite images, vector map data, photographs of a location, travel guide descriptions, etc., may each have one or more copyrights.